


Knaves & Playthings

by eyra



Series: Crowns & Coffee Cups [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Non-Magical, Birthday, Chronic Illness, Headaches & Migraines, Hurt/Comfort, Illnesses, Just bros showering together, M/M, Marauders, Marauders Era (Harry Potter), Modern Era, Post-Divorce, Sick Remus Lupin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-10
Updated: 2021-03-10
Packaged: 2021-03-17 12:42:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,896
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29966568
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eyra/pseuds/eyra
Summary: They do this, now; this dance, this game of cards. Late-night phone calls after dinner, and after Harry's little suitcase has been packed up for a weekend with his mum. Taxi rides in the dark, all ruffled hair and bleary eyes until one of them arrives on the other's doorstep and they fall back together like Seventh Year, acting like teenagers and like none of this ever had any consequences.Or: how to begin to fall back together, after you messed it up the first time.
Relationships: Remus Lupin/James Potter
Series: Crowns & Coffee Cups [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2204058
Comments: 8
Kudos: 32





	Knaves & Playthings

**Author's Note:**

> A little something for the man's birthday. Lads I swear I try to write lovely happy things but then... this happens. Enjoy? 
> 
> Kind of need to have read Crowns & Coffee Cups first. x

"James?"

His voice drifts down the line, distant and clear; a siren song, like it always was. James sits up in bed.

"Hi," he whispers, for the late hour despite the otherwise empty bedroom. "Happy birthday."

There's a quiet huff of breath on the receiver, then something that might be a murmured _"Thank you."_ Might just be static, otherwise.

"I tried ringing you earlier," James presses on, running a hand through his sleep-flattened hair. He shivers. "You had a good day?"

"It was alright."

"Do anything nice tonight?"

Silence, again. James knows where he's been. He knows why he's calling. They do this, now; this dance, this game of cards. Late-night phone calls after dinner, and after Harry's little suitcase has been packed up for a weekend with his mum. Taxi rides in the dark, all ruffled hair and bleary eyes until one of them arrives on the other's doorstep and they fall back together like Seventh Year, acting like teenagers and like none of this ever had any consequences. Like it wasn't the reason James could never make it work with Lily. Like it isn't why he finds himself sitting silently on the sofa on the evenings when he knows Remus is out with Caradoc, turning his phone over and over and over in his hand, waiting.

_"You two are fucking idiots,"_ Sirius had said delicately on occasion, over the years. James tends to agree.

"Can I come over?" James says now, and it's a hitch of breath down the line that could be relief - could be resignation, he doesn't know anymore - that has him stuffing his feet into unlaced boots and shrugging on his woollen overcoat against the March chill. He knows (though would never say it out loud, to anyone) that he and Lily chose Finchley only because that's where Remus had ended up. It had been some aunt, he thinks - or a great-grandma by marriage - who'd died shortly after school and left Remus a little terrace to the north of the park, for no other reason than Remus was the only one of his generation and everyone else seemed to have either emigrated or died, by that point. It was a charming little thing; a wrought iron gate painted black opening up to a garden path, no longer than two or three slabs of stone, and then a front door with a knocker shaped like a lion's head. A sitting room with the original fireplace, a kitchen down a narrow hallway that overlooked a small yard, and two bedrooms looking to the front and the back of the row respectively.

"It just makes sense, doesn't it?" James had said to Lily over roaring traffic one day, heading into an estate agents three streets across from Remus's. "Finchley's so convenient for work, and there are some great schools around here. It makes sense for us, doesn't it?"

Sirius had nodded wordlessly when James had told him about the townhouse he and Lily had put in an offer on later that day, and James had downed his pint and changed the subject.

Remus is waiting by the door when he arrives. He's already in his pyjamas; flannel trousers and a baggy, threadbare jumper the colour of gingerbread, with holes worn through at the elbows and an ink stain on the sleeve that's never come out no matter what James has tried using on it.

"Happy birthday," James murmurs when he reaches the top of the garden path, and leans in to give Remus their customary peck on the cheek. "I erm, I sent you a-"

He breaks off, seeing the opened package on the console table in the narrow hallway; a print of Remus holding Harry last Christmas, the pair of them grinning up at the camera in a plain, nondescript frame. It's probably entirely inappropriate, he thinks now, but it had seemed the safer option at the time. There'd been a book he'd been eyeing up for weeks, tucked away in a little place in Covent Garden; a first edition from some Irish poet Remus had been keen on in school, and James had gone back to the shop on four separate occasions and held it and leafed carefully through it and asked the shopkeeper all about it, and then he'd slid it neatly back onto its shelf, and thanked the proprietor, and left. Every time, he'd left, and then he'd dutifully sent off for the print of the Christmas photograph and had it framed as if his past with Remus wasn't the sole reason the laughing boy in the picture now splits his life between his parents' two houses, a city apart.

"Yeah, thank you," Remus says with a faint smile, picking up the print whilst James toes off his boots by the door. "I like that picture."

"Me too."

They stand there in silence in the hallway, looking down at the photograph in Remus's hands, and then - somehow - James is running a hand lightly up Remus's back, and letting it come to rest on the back of his neck.

"Are you alright?" he murmurs, and watches as Remus swallows and sets the frame back down in the layers of tissue paper on the console.

"Horrible night, really," Remus says unsteadily, and James feels his fingers twitch against Remus's cool skin just below his hairline. "I wasn't feeling well, so he just went home."

"And was that your decision or his?"

"His," murmurs Remus, then throws a sideways smile at James. "Never mind."

James watches him retreat in the kitchen. He pulls his overcoat off, hanging it on the pegs at the foot of the stairs, and knocks the thermostat up on the wall as he passes it.

"Sit down," he says quietly, and pulls two mugs out of the cupboard next to the fridge as Remus sinks into a chair in the lamplight. Such a familiar rhythm, now, and between all the pain, and the indecision, and the years of wasted time this kitchen, somehow, became his happy place; that quiet, safe haven, shared only in late-night conversations and hands held over the tiny kitchen table across from the window. Something like what they'd had at school, tucked up in their twin beds by the fire. Something like that, perhaps. There's a chip knocked out of the Belfast sink from when Remus dropped a heavy-bottomed pan a few summers ago, and a tile behind the cooker that always seems to come loose again no matter how many times James fixes the grout. The little wooden door to the under-stairs pantry has never shut properly, and for the past two years has been held shut by an old pair of James's shoes wedged against it, as if he might've walked right out of them across the stone floor and forgotten them there in the corner. It's all perfectly imperfect, James thinks, and wonders if the same label couldn't be applied to the pair of them. Perfectly imperfect. Perfectly improbable. Perfect fucking idiots, Sirius might say.

A perfect mess, really. They'd had Seventh Year, and how glorious it had been; an autumn of shared kisses they never spoke about, and a winter of huddling together under covers when they stole moments alone between lessons and through skipped dinners. They'd slept together in the January, for the first time, the dormitory empty for a long weekend that found Sirius and Peter eloping to some concert in Windsor and staying at a bed and breakfast for the night, and James and Remus really had intended to join them but then Remus had looked at him in that way of his, and crawled into bed in the middle of the afternoon, and that had been enough. Enough to see cold hands run over warm skin under rumpled shirts and the way Remus's cheeks dimpled in a smile when James lay behind him and kissed the back of his neck. They made it through the spring, and then school had finished and Remus had whisked himself away for a few months to stay with his ailing mother back home. A drunken night in town for James and Sirius, a chance encounter with Lily in some bar he's never been back to since, and nine months later, little Harry, and a ring on Lily's finger.

And then Remus. Always Remus. Always there, always perfect. His doctor had changed his prescription sometime just after Harry's second birthday and it had sent him - and the memory makes James's stomach turn, still - into a long, agonising chain of sickness, headache after fever after days of being unable to even get himself out of bed. James had moved to the terrace then, and stayed for a fortnight, and Lily hadn't said much about it at the time but James had known that it was inexcusable to her. But then Remus would've thrown up, or fallen, and James would've been there to catch him, and, terribly, the rest of it just didn't seem to matter that much. Harry was safe, and well, and Lily was with him, and a year later when the divorce went through James had sat alone in the townhouse they used to share and watched television alone and felt alarmingly accepting of the whole thing.

It would hit him later, of course, when he trod on a forgotten toy of Harry's, or found one of his little socks in the bottom of the laundry basket. Lily had, all things considered, been incredibly reasonable about the agreement they'd come to, but it still ached; something tired and resentful inside himself, reminding him that his torment was entirely of his own making. But then he'd come here, and see Remus, and give him their silent kiss on the cheek and hold his hand loosely over the table and somehow that was almost enough. Maybe that could be enough.

"Have you taken your pill?" James murmurs now, setting a mug of ginger tea down in front of Remus and eyeing him in the glow of the lamplight.

"No."

"Why not?"

"That new prescription," Remus says, frowning and rubbing absently at a spot over his left eyebrow. "It's no good. It doesn't touch it."

"Have you told them that?"

"Yes, I've told them," he says tiredly. "They said to wait a few more weeks."

James sips his tea, and watches Remus across the table.

"Right."

"It's just constant, now. It just always hurts."

Remus's voice wavers on the last syllable, and James slams his mug down; at Caradoc, or the headache, or the whole bloody thing. At Remus's horrible birthday. 

"Come here," he says, standing and motioning for Remus to join him. He leads him, tea in hand, to the sitting room, where the heating's ticking over and the air is warm and quiet. He seems to prefer that now, James has noticed; at school it was fresh air, and a breeze, and cool hands on his forehead that gave him relief. Now the slightest draught seems to send him shivering under a blanket, face pinched in discomfort; he likes the warmth now. 

"Thank you," Remus sighs when James coaxes him down to lay across the sofa, head in James's lap and James's hands - warmed on the tea mug - laid one across his brow and one in his curly hair, thumbs applying a gentle, building pressure to points as familiar to him as his own fingertips. The spot over Remus's eyebrow, a little patch of faded freckles. His temple; a thumb running circles into the bone. 

"Have you eaten?" James murmurs, watching Remus's eyes flutter closed beneath him.

"No," he whispers, the pinch of his brow already beginning to unfurl. "We just went to a bar."

He really tries not to get cross about these things. He knows, in the early days of his own marriage, what comfort Remus seemed to find in Caradoc and their nights together. He knows Caradoc isn't a bad man; if he were, James would've seen to that years ago, but he _is_ careless. He seems to forget, as James sees it, that Remus isn't merely something that can be picked up and played with at will and then tossed aside for months at a time. He forgets that Remus, for all his autonomy and cleverness, enjoys being looked after, and always has. He seems to forget that Remus needs to eat a decent fucking meal in an evening or else he'll feel terrible by bedtime, and won't sleep, and won't say a word about it to anyone but James.

He tries even harder not to think on why Remus went after Caradoc in the first place, and who James is even angry at, anymore. It's really better to not think about any of that, now.

"I'll order some food in a bit," he says quietly, and then it's just the ticking of the old clock out in the hall, and the gentle hum of the central heating, and, eventually, a small smile on Remus's freckled face as he lies there in James's lap.

"Magic hands," he murmurs, and James shakes his head and smiles back.

"How's your stomach?"

"Fine," whispers Remus, eyes still closed, face serene now under James's ministrations. "Fine now."

They pad upstairs a little while later, James helping Remus off with his pyjamas and bundling him into a hot shower. It's an instinct to follow him; that became allowed, somewhere along the way, because if Remus's head was throbbing or his stomach was threatening revolt then much better to have James there with him, to rub lather into his curls and gently rinse the soap away and make sure he never falls, or stumbles, or passes out and hits his head on the tiles like he did that day in Seventh Year. There'd been a visible crack in the ceramic of the shower cubicle after that, in their little bathroom off the dormitory, and James wonders sometimes if the reason he doesn't find that loose tile in the kitchen so infuriating isn't because it forcibly reminds him of the loose tile in the school shower, taunting him and making him see water running red and Remus's forehead, bruised and swollen for weeks afterwards.

So it's allowed, now, and neither one of them says a word as James finds the shower gel - the same one he always used at school, he noted when it first appeared, and didn't question it - and washes Remus carefully, Remus's eyes falling closed again as he lets his head lay back against James's collarbone under the spray. They rinse, together, and then James is helping him into a great bundle of white, fluffy towels, and leaving him perched on the edge of his bed to pull his old jumper back on whilst James steps into the hall and rings the takeaway for them.

"Both large, yes," he says, watching Remus through the crack in the door. "And two black coffees."

The voice on the other end of the line reads his order back, and Remus looks up and smiles at him from the bed.

"Actually," James murmurs, taking a step further down the hall, away from the bedroom. "There's one more thing..."

***

"That one's yours."

Remus grins as James passes him the pizza box and a paper cup of steaming coffee, then falters at the three white pills balanced atop the lid.

"It really doesn't work, you know," he mutters glumly.

"So you've said," James says, taking a seat across the table from him with his own pizza. "Take them anyway."

There's a silence then, as Remus tosses back the capsule and the two aspirin - popped from the packet that seems to live perennially in James's coat pocket - with a glug from his coffee and a grimace as they go down. And then, as he opens his pizza box, a short exhalation of breath.

"Happy birthday," James murmurs, glancing over at the pizza in front of Remus; the message spelled out in pineapple and olives looks disgusting, and he'll argue with Remus at length on any other day of the year about how his pizza toppings of choice are unacceptable. But not today; today, they're fine.

"You got me a birthday pizza," Remus says in disbelief, and when James looks up again it's to find him blinking helplessly across the table, all wet hair and wide eyes and - and it kills James in the best and worst ways imaginable - a bottom lip pulled between white teeth that tells James he's a moment away from tears.

"I got you a birthday pizza," he nods, voice soft in the quiet of the kitchen.

Remus sniffs at that, and looks back down at the box, and then shakes his head and huffs out a long, low breath. "I really don't want to see Caradoc anymore," he says quietly, and James nods again.

"I know," he says, because he always knows. Of course he knows. Of course Remus shouldn't be with Caradoc. Of course he himself should never have been with Lily, and may the gods strike him down for thinking such a thing because without her - without them - there'd be no Harry, and that wouldn't do at all. But of course it's all different now; no Lily. No Caradoc, eventually, inevitably. Just them. Perfectly improbable. Perfectly imperfect.

"Eat your food," he mutters, nudging Remus's socked foot under the table between them. "Happy birthday."


End file.
